On a cool June night, planes flew noisily en route to the Hollywood Burbank Airport. Outside a chain link fence, traffic roared on Burbank Blvd. But in the converted lot next to The Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, a miracle was happening.
After 16 months without a single in-person show, audience members began to file into The Yard, The Group Rep’s newly appointed outdoor theater, to watch a show. “I think the audience was so grateful to have live theater back,” says Craig Holland, a playwright at The Group Rep. “There was a lot of energy in the air.”
This tight-knit family of artists has weathered the lockdowns, reopenings, and capacity mandates of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the future of the NoHo Arts District, the second largest theater district in the country, has never been more precarious.
The Group Rep was started about 48 years ago in Hollywood in a converted laundromat and has survived all this time, every year just barely getting by. Doug Haverty is the Artistic Director. Click here to download video.
The North Hollywood Arts District (named after New York’s SoHo) was founded in 1992 by a group of Hollywood creatives in flight from rising rents. With the help of the Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, these artists established a creative hub that grew to encompass 22 operational live theaters at its peak, the most per capita anywhere in the country behind Broadway.
But when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the first state-wide stay-at-home order of the COVID era last March, structural issues that had plagued many theaters for decades threatened to swallow the entire district.
The Group Rep’s Audience Celebrates Being Back in Person
Featured: Kelly Randall, Wendy Whitfield, Sascha Vanderslick, Barbara Brownell, Bill Lovelace, Aroon Nayer, Lisa Hankee, Karen Tarleton, and James Cox.
North Hollywood currently ranks as the 12th most gentrified neighborhood in Los Angeles County. Stephanie Jaeger, Executive Director of the NoHo Home Alliance and pastor at NoHo’s St. Matthews Lutheran Church, singles out District NoHo, a $1 billion mega-development to be built next to the Arts District, as a primary driver of gentrification and rising rents.
“We can't say that out of one side of our mouth, ‘We are a city committed to equity,’ and then out of the other side of our mouth support a joint development project that doesn't promote equity, but in fact promotes inequity in a number of ways,” Jaeger says.
Tom Waldman, the Communications Director for NoHo’s City Council Representative, Paul Krekorian, hopes these projects will bring much needed foot traffic to the theaters. But he acknowledges the challenges they face.
“Culture is a difficult thing to bring to the public,” Waldman says. “You need an audience, and productions cost money.” At the behest of Nancy Bianconi, CEO of the NoHo Communications Group, Krekorian reallocated $200,000 from the district budget in May 2020 to help a group of 15 NoHo theaters stay open.
Bianconi has been a central fixture in the Arts District for over two decades, earning her the nickname “The Godmother” from Theatre 68 owner Ronnie Marmo. Bianconi runs communications on behalf of the theaters alongside her daughter and business partner Lisa. When the lockdowns cut off the theaters’ primary source of revenue—ticket sales for in-person shows—the Bianconis sprang into action with a GoFundMe.
“We raised $27,000, just trying to keep everyone alive,” Bianconi says. “But then when it got past six months, we knew we were having serious problems—that we’d lose the entire Arts District.” Even with Krekorian’s financial help, many theaters have since been forced to close.
The map illustrates which of the theaters are open and which are closed within the NoHo Arts District. Although not visible due to its close proximity to Secret Rose Theatre, Crown City Theatre was also closed after the pandemic hit.
Marmo lost his for-profit theater space early into the pandemic. He lamented the early response from officials, saying, “I don’t think they took us very seriously. Eventually, with the help of people like Nancy Bianconi ... and the other theaters pulling together as a unit, we found ways to stay afloat. But I don't think we were at the top of anyone’s mind locally at first.”
Artistic venues are instrumental in attracting bars and restaurants, which in turn, make the community more affluent than theaters can afford. “The arts come into a neighborhood to bring it to life,” Marmo adds. “And we're the first to have to leave cause we can’t afford to stay.” His acting troupe, also named Theatre 68, still functions, and has received offers of residency at multiple theater spaces throughout the area. But he’s taking his time canvassing for a permanent home.
“It's important for us
to continue what we
are doing for the community.
Art is important.”
— Taylor Gilbert,
The Road Theatre's founder
and artisic director
Unlike most theaters in the district, Zombie Joe’s Underground Theatre is for-profit, which means it’s ineligible for many types of grants and public aid. “Most of the [theaters] we lost were commercial, because they didn't have a lot of funding options,” Bianconi says. “They had to get loans, and if they took a loan they would default.”
Despite these hurdles, Zombie Joe’s has reopened for indoor, in-person shows, persevering through a disaster that has decimated the theater industry. Zombie Joe’s will continue to operate in the unique way that has made them successful, such as their interactive shows, which involve audience participation and improvisation. “It has to be more than your run-of-the-mill theater,” their eponymous leader says. “Even when it is traditional theater.”
Some of the NoHo theaters did not survive the pandemic. Here's a look at one that survived and one that hasn't given up hope.
Click here to download video.
The Road Theatre’s non-profit status helped it survive the pandemic, and like The Group Rep, The Road crew quickly pivoted from in-person to livestreamed shows. “Being in theater in general is a lot about hope and magic, and we kept thinking it's only going to be another three months, five months, and so on,” says Taylor Gilbert, The Road’s founder and artistic director.
The Road is housed inside the NoHo Senior Arts Colony, a subsidized development containing luxury lofts, affordable accommodations for seniors, and a ground floor devoted to the arts. The arrangement substantially reduces the rent burden on Gilbert, who sees what The Road does for NoHo as vital. “It's important for us to continue what we are doing for the community,” Gilbert says. “Art is important.”
A 360 degree view of The Group Rep's newly opened outdoor space, The Yard. Click the features to learn more about one of NoHo's oldest and most enduring theaters.
Bianconi sees two main reasons for who succeeded and who didn't: theaters’ for- or non-profit status, and the relationship theaters have with their landlords. “Some landlords were willing to not worry about rent for the 18 months,” Bianconi says. “Some said we’ll cut it in the middle, pay me a little bit now and in the long run you’ll pay me half ... everyone was different.”
Beyond that, Bianconi has other ideas for how the Arts District could fare better in the long term. One idea is a “sixplex,” which she describes as, “a large development that would have six separate theaters.” She also suggests a program that would allow theater owners to buy their buildings. Subsidized rent and mortgages might be, in Bianconi’s words, “the only hope.”
The audience filing in to "The Yard" before The Group Rep's "Motel 66" performance on July 18, 2021. Photo by Dua Anjum.
The effects of an increasingly gentrified neighborhood and a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic have forever altered the makeup of one of the largest theater districts in the country. Theaters have permanently shut down and many more stand on the brink, but the theater industry persists, refusing to go quietly.
“Los Angeles is a grimy, weird city and it gets lost in the polish and the glitz of Hollywood,” says Brandon Slezak, Zombie Joe’s General Manager. “But when it comes down to it, it's a city full of hard-working people trying to make dreams come true and trying to make crazy things happen. I hope that NoHo continues to be that and I think there is no reason why it shouldn’t be that.”